


a place for getting lost (and for getting found)

by ohmytheon



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Abandonment, Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Burn Notice fusion, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Drugs, Emotionally Compromised, F/M, Fear, Flashbacks, Gen, Hallucinations, Hope, Imprisonment, Interrogation, Mental Instability, Mission Fic, Original Character(s), Orphans, Past Violence, Pre-Canon, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Psychological Warfare, Reality Bending, Rebellion, Regret, Self-Acceptance, Self-Denial, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Torture, Undercover, Understanding, War, Young Cassian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-09 17:18:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11109204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmytheon/pseuds/ohmytheon
Summary: When Alliance Intelligence is hacked and Rebel spies across the galaxy are killed and more threatened to be compromised, Cassian Andor is left adrift of the only life he's known and cut off from everyone. Now, with his life hanging in the balance of the people that ruined everything, he must prove that he's loyal. But to who?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was heavily inspired by one of my all-time favorite episodes of a tv show ever: Burn Notice's season seven episode titled "Psychological Warfare". I watched it three times while writing this. It's not necessary to do the same, but the main character in the show is a spy, so I've got a lot of feelings about him and Cassian and what they do. Of course this has some Rebelcaptain in it -- because I'm weak -- but I really wanted this to be centered almost entirely on Cassian and his very complicated relationship with the Rebellion, along with his past. It's also finished, so I can update this daily. I decided against posting it as one long thing since it's 27 pages. Sorry for the gajillion tags: I just didn't want people to walk into this unawares of the mess that this is. Also, are there a bunch of plotholes? Yeah, no doubt. Do I care? Meeeh, kind of. But I really did love writing this.

_“It doesn’t matter how many times you leave,_  
_it will always hurt to come back_  
_and remember what you once had and who you once were._  
_Then it will hurt just as much to leave again,_  
_and so it goes over and over again._  
_Once you’ve started to leave, you will run your whole life.”_  
― **Charlotte Eriksson**

* * *

 

 

_ They’re going to kill you. _

The black bag hanging over his head was ripped off and Cassian’s eyes snapped open. He was kneeling in the middle of a very bright, crisp, white cell, his hands no longer tied and completely uninjured. Two men stepped through a door on the other side and shut it behind them, locking him inside. He was alone in the silence and made no attempts to move or try to escape. There wasn’t a point.

He blinked placidly as he searched the room with his eyes. No handle or keycode panel on the inside. No windows on the walls. Six strategically placed speakers, perhaps so he could be spoken to by his captors. But why so many? There was one camera as well high up in the corner, trained on him, like an ever-watching eye. The room was almost deadly silent, but if he focused, he could feel the gentle movements of the ship that he was on as it cruised through space, so he knew they hadn’t landed on planet or gone to their base.

As far as anyone outside of here was concerned, he’d vanished, a blip off the radar.

Suddenly, piercing warning sirens began screaming through the speakers. He pressed the heels of his palms to his ears to block out the sound, but it could only dull them marginally. It wasn’t long before the sirens drilled their way into his head and the light became too bright. All he could do was close his eyes, kneel in place, and hold his ears, as if removing any of his senses might help with the pain, but it was always there. The sirens, the lights, the hard metal against his knees.

Every time he tried to force his mind to drift, the sirens would either pull him back or his eyes would flicker open briefly and he’d snap back into the room. The light washed out everything. The two mixed together until the light was screaming and the sirens were burning. He lost track of time without meaning to and everything began to crumble.

But he didn’t move and he didn’t flinch. His only consolation was that they hadn’t started physical torture. Of course, the fact that he didn’t know if or when it would happen hung over him like a threat. This, he told himself, he could handle. He’d gone through it before; he’d done it to others before. The surest way to break someone was not with the body but through the mind. For men like him, his mind was his greatest weapon and worst liability.

Maybe they would kill him, but they wouldn’t break him. He wouldn’t allow it.

*

The room they’d dragged him to afterwards was completely different. He’d been able to walk there himself, but the ringing in his ears caused him to stumble if they rounded a corner too sharply. He said nothing and neither did the men walking at his sides. They’d bound his hands again, but in front of him. Careless, considering what he was, but he didn’t make a move to grab either of their holstered blasters. He kept his eyes forward until they reached their destination and sat down in the empty seat.

Only when he was sitting down did Cassian allow his eyes to roam. They were in an office, not the main one on the ship, but perhaps the second-in-command’s. It was nicely decorated, clean, and orderly. A hologram of a lush planet played tranquilly against the wall to the left, like an intimate peek into someone’s world. He very much doubted that this room belonged to the gentle-looking man sitting before him.

“You put on quite the welcoming party,” Cassian said, his voice rough from disuse after spending hours locked away in the cell. At least he thought it had been hours. It could’ve been less than that. It was impossible to recall, but then, that was the point.

The man smiled, looking all to the world as a pleasant human being. He was modestly dressed in nondescript clothes with short, brown hair and almost kind blue eyes. He was good-looking in an average sort of way, the kind of person your eyes would catch one second and then slide away from the next when something more interesting popped up. Cassian had never seen a more dangerous person in his life and he stared at a dangerous person every time he looked in the mirror.

“It’s not every day that we're visited by a top Rebel Alliance spy,” the man greeted.

Cassian didn’t blink. Yes, that was what he was. “I gave almost my entire life to the Rebellion.”

“Almost?” The man tilted his head. “I read your file. You gave them everything.”

_ No, not everything.  _ Cassian squashed the thought away before it could transform into something more concrete.

“I have to wonder what a man like you is doing here,” the man continued. “I would expect infiltration from you, as it is your expertise, but you came here under your own name. That’s either very clever or very stupid.”

“My name is all I have left,” Cassian replied. “They stripped me of everything else.”

“Oh, is that so, Captain?”

Cassian’s eyes flickered to the datachip twirling in the man’s fingers. “You read the file. That’s the first thing they took, the easiest. A rank is just a word in the end. I never had much use for it besides getting my own room.”

The man chuckled. “No, the Rebellion doesn’t pay very well, does it?”

“I didn’t join it for the money,” Cassian pointed out mildly. He’d never really had any money to begin with. After the death of his parents, anything was better than nothing. The Rebellion had offered that. A chance to fight, a place to rest, a plate of something to eat. He’d learned to not be picky early on in life.

“It is interesting to see what’s become of you,” the man said, “if it’s true.”

He paused, his eyes roving over Cassian’s face, but Cassian didn’t react. It was true. He had been cast adrift. He felt aimless and alone. Most of his ops had always been like that, but this was different. There was no one he could contact now. He was cut off. He’d been alone plenty of times before, but being lonely was a different sort of wound, one that he hadn’t anticipated to sting so sharply.

“You’re a spy with only your name left to you,” the man sighed, “when a name is the one thing a spy is supposed to never have.”

“I’m not the only one,” Cassian said. “When your group managed to hack the Alliance, you exposed more than just one person, more than one spy.”

The man held out his hands, palms up. “And yet you’re the only one here.”

“I’m the only one in the field left  _ alive _ ,” Cassian corrected. “Everyone else went into hiding in fear of what you'd do with your newfound information or are already dead.”

A smile crossed the man’s face again, but this one wasn’t so pleasant. It had a more vicious angle to it, a relentless hunger gleaming in his eyes. “That you are. And that’s why we’re here today. I must admit: I’m very curious. Before I can make any decisions, I want to know why. I want to know how.”

“You know how,” Cassian countered. “If you truly have read my file, you’ll know that I’m good. Better than good. I would have died years ago if I wasn’t.”

“Confident, are we?”

“I know my record.”

It was impossible to forget. He saw the dead at his feet, enemies, friends, informants, people he didn’t know, their blood on his hands, their faces imprinted in his memory. He pictured lying on rocky ground, cold rain pelting him, his eye peering through the scope of his rifle as his finger sat on the trigger, waiting, always waiting, not for the right feeling in his gut, but for the right time. He thought of climbing, his body screaming at him in protest, his bones trembling under the pressure, his mind alight with fire and stardust.

He knew what he was capable of.

“I don’t care about the record and I don’t care about the name,” the man told him. “I care about the man behind all of that. I care about you. Isn’t that a comforting thought? To be cared for? Can you recall what that’s like?”

Yes. No. He didn’t want to recall. It was gone.

*

Screaming light. Or was it the sirens? He couldn’t tell.

He’d started sitting up straight on his knees, but found himself doubled over with his forehead pressed against the floor now. There was little he could do but lay there and take it. If he so much as opened his eyes to squint, the light would hit him so hard that it shattered his last attempt to concentrate. His head throbbed, demanding release, but he knew that it wouldn’t come. Sometimes he was only in here for minutes, sometimes half a day, but it was all beginning to feel the same in the end.

It had been nearly a day since he’d last eaten. They fed him well when they did, but then kept him away from any food or water after. He’d sweated through his shirt, the painful strain of the psychological attacks starting to turn psychosomatic, and he really couldn’t afford to lose anymore water. One or two glasses a day wouldn’t cut it much longer. His body was beginning to revolt.

How long? How many days? He tried to think, but the sirens cut through any attempt at precise thinking.

Unable to lay still any longer, he jerked upright and opened his eyes wide. The light burst through his retinas, practically burning him, but this time he didn’t close his eyes. Instead, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to look at the walls. The tips of his fingers dug into his hair, pressing hard against his skull, until it hurt, just to bring a new sensation.

Sensory overload technically wasn’t torture, according to the rules. Try telling that to someone experiencing them. Laughter bubbled up his chest, but he bit his lip to keep himself silent, biting even after it started to bleed. Try telling him that.

*

“You served under who first as Joreth Sward?”

Cassian rubbed the side of his face with a hand. “I told you. It’s in the file.” The man patiently waited for an answer, one that Cassian knew he already knew. He’d said it once before; it was listed in a few briefings. “Grendeef, an Imperial Admiral in the naval branch.”

“And what did you do?”

“I was his assistant. Followed him around. Took memos. Made calls.”

“You did a little more than that,” the man pressed. “Sward was one of your deepest and longest covers. In fact, you continued to use it after the op, didn’t you?”

Cassian’s head lolled and his eyes rolled to the ceiling, like they were trying to catch a glimpse of something just barely out of his line of sight. “Yes, he was never compromised. Grendeef was sensitive and prone to impulsive decisions when drinking. Sward made a minor error and was fired.”

“How many times did you use that cover?”

“Seven.”

“You said nine last time. Which one is it?”

He forced himself to look forward again. “It was...seven official times, plus two unofficial.” Or had it been three? He had trouble remembering. Sward had been difficult to slip into, so different from his actual personality, but it had always worked, perhaps for that very reason. “His scandocs were the best, his Imperial connections well-known. If I needed to be someone else quickly, he was who I went to.”

“You speak like he was a completely separate person.”

“He wasn’t me,” Cassian said, and it was true. All his true cover identities felt like entirely someone else.

“And yet you were the man behind the name, weren’t you?”

“He wasn’t me,” Cassian repeated, quieter this time.

The man sighed, almost like he pitied Cassian. It had an unsettling effect. “I wonder: how many times have you told yourself that after an op? The Alliance prides itself on its honor and moral high ground, but there’s always something insidious underneath all that shine.”

Cassian closed his eyes. It was him and beings like him. They were the darkness the Rebellion desperately tried to ignore. A much needed and necessary darkness, festering like an untreated wound.

*

He couldn’t stand to be in the center of the room anymore. Unable to stay on his knees, he’d found himself sitting down with his back pressed against the wall, his knees curled up to his chest. It made him feel like a child. He sat there, practically huddled in a ball, his hands pressed hard against his ears, his eyes shut tight, as the siren sounds and light washed over him. It didn’t matter how hard he closed his eyes; the light burned through his eyelids.

Eventually, he couldn’t take that any longer either. His muscles ached from the strain of holding himself together so tightly. His knees slid away from his chest until his legs were sprawled out before him. His hands fell away from his ears, dropping limply at his side. Even his eyes drifted open, not fully, but he was too tired to close them. The back of his head cracked against the back of the wall, but he didn’t even wince. He was already in too much pain.

How much longer could he take? How much longer would they put him through this?

He wanted to scream, but he didn’t have the strength.

_ You’re going to die in here. _

Would it be so bad?

(Yes, he wasn’t ready to die. It was almost a shameful thing for him to admit.)

*

“You’re holding back, Cassian.”

His head throbbed intensely, but Cassian managed to gesture with a hand, shaky as it was. “How can I hold back? You’ve got-- you’ve got everything in there.”

“No, I’ve got the notations. I’ve got the missions. I’ve got the reports.” The man sat down across from him and idly hooked an ankle over one knee. “What I want is the man.”

Cassian pressed a hand to his face. “It’s in there. It’s-- it’s in the scandocs you hacked.”

“It’s in your head,” the man told him, using a finger to tap his own. It was like he was talking to a child. Cassian blinked, tried to concentrate. He wasn’t in the sensory overload cell anymore, but his mind felt like it was still there somehow. “I know you’re not used to talking about yourself. It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? No one asks a spy to be open. It’s not in your nature. It’s not in the job description.”

No one ever did and so he didn’t. It was the opposite of who he was. He’d been closed off for as long as he could remember, but he was having trouble remembering anything. Things wouldn’t come to him in linear thoughts. How long after his parents died had he joined the Rebellion? He saw people that he’d met just a few years ago kicking a ball to him on Fest. No, no, that wasn’t right. He had to think. He didn’t talk about himself. Maybe one day he had been an open book, but that time was long gone.

A stray thought wiggled in the back of his mind. There was something -- someone. She’d never asked him to be open with her -- never expected it of him, never pushed him -- but he’d wanted to be. He’d been willing to try, even though she didn’t require it of him. He hadn’t done it though, had he? Not enough. It was never enough.

“I need you to be honest,” the man told him.

Unexpectedly, a bark of laughter spilled out of Cassian’s lips. He cut it off quickly, not sure where it had come from or why. He refocused on the man in front of him.

“Can you do that?” the man asked. “Can you be honest? With me? With yourself?”

“I’ve been honest,” Cassian mumbled. “I’ve answered all your questions.”

The man smiled. “You didn’t answer that last one.” Semantics. It didn’t matter. He’d done what had been asked of him. He was here. He was talking. That was more than he’d ever done before. “Who are you? Are you a spy for the Rebel Alliance?”

“I’m no one,” Cassian answered, “not anymore.”

“I’ve never met someone that’s no one,” the man replied, standing up and moving to his desk. “Intelligence is meant to bury the true person until they no longer exist, but we will exhume the man again.” As he walked back to Cassian, he held a syringe in his hand. “This will help. It’ll bring you back to the surface. Of course, it won’t be all that pleasant. You might experience some nausea, overheating, elevated heart rate.” His eyes flickered away from the syringe to Cassian. “Hallucinations. They’ll feel very real. And that’s what we need: the real you.”

Cassian shook his head weakly, shying away from the syringe. “The files--”

“Are not you,” the man interrupted as he crouched next to the chair. “You wrote very detailed, precise reports that fully lacked any emotions or depth. Even most seasoned spies let those bleed through sometimes, but not you. You were hiding. But from what?” He edged the needle against Cassian’s forearm. “I think we know who. Now we need to find out the why.”

He stuck the needle in a vein and pressed down on the syringe. The air was sucked right out of Cassian’s lungs. He immediately clambered for something to hold onto, the arms of the chair, but it felt like he was spiralling. In his chest, his heart began to race so wildly that he swore he could hear it.

“This will hit you hard, Cassian,” the man’s voice said. He was close, but he sounded so far. Cassian couldn’t find him. He couldn’t see right in front of him. “Don’t fight it.”

That wasn’t in his nature anymore. Someone had changed it.

*

He didn’t even attempt to block out the sounds or light anymore. Instead, he laid on the ground on his side, his back against the wall, his legs tangled, his arms flopped out before him. Sweat poured down his face, his hair wet and pressed against his face. Dark patches had soaked through his shirt, causing it to stick to his skin in places. Dark circles hung like sallows underneath his red eyes.

No broken bones. No beatings. No pulled out nails. No physical torture. He tried to latch onto that, spin it into something hopeful, but it was next to impossible to do when every gasping breath he took made it feel like he was pumping the hallucinogenic drugs through his bloodstream even faster.

It didn’t matter how hard he tried to grasp onto something in his mind. It always slipped away from him, dancing along the peripheral, just out of sight. Flashes came to him instead. Some from not too long ago, some that he had thought that he’d forgotten. His mother’s face. Setting his first explosive charge under an Imperial ship, the space too tight and small for anyone but him. Grease staining spark-burned fingertips as he rewired a security droid. His first drink of Corellian gin. Blood spurting onto the front of his jacket. Falling, falling, falling.

Nothing but stardust.

A dark shape comes into view before him. Nothing but a blur at first, but when he blinks his eyes a few times, the figure becomes more solid until it turned into a person. The sirens are gone. It's still bright, almost too bright behind them to see their face, but he knows who it is in a second.

She's wearing her old outfit, the one he saw her in when they first met. Wobani didn’t have prison clothes. You worked in what you’d been brought in. The vest hangs on her like her shoulders carry the weight of the galaxy. He expects a blaster to be at her hip, his blaster, but it isn’t there. She's dirty, covered in the mess of her past.

But she's beautiful. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. In fact, she's too beautiful to be here, so much so that a part of him wants to tell her to leave, but he can’t get the words to come out of his mouth.

The only thing he can think of is her name, and so that's what he says. “Jyn.”

She walks towards him, her steps heavy in her boots. He bets there's a vibroblade tucked in one. When she reaches him, she bends down to sit on her knees and helps pull him back up to lean against the wall. She is close enough for him to see the flecks of gold in her sharp green eyes. Flecks of stardust. He reaches out towards her, but it's so hard to move. He wants to hold her, pull her against his chest. Instead, she presses her hands flat against the floor and leans in, so close her hair brushes against his face.

“Jyn,” he says again, this time close to a sob, his voice flooded with shame. “I can’t-- I can’t do it--”

“You have to,” Jyn tells him. “You have to be strong.”

“I can’t,” he gasps. He hates that she sees him like this. It's worse than Scarif. Worse than Hoth. “I’m too weak.”

She moves back slightly so that she can gaze into his eyes. “They’ll kill you if you don’t. We’ll all die.”

“No, no,” he mutters, shaking his head. “You can’t.”

“Then you have to fight this,” Jyn says. “If you tell them, you won’t be able to come back.”

He clenches his hands into fists and digs his nails into his palms. “I can’t. They’re too strong. I can’t-- I don’t know how much more I can take. You were always better at fighting.”

She lifts a hand and brushes his hair gently back from his face. She is never gentle with anything, save for him on rare occasions when the mood strikes her. It has been a long time since anyone has ever been gentle with him. He forgot what it felt like. He craves it now, leaning forward into her touch. “If you tell them, you die. You have to beat this.”

“I can’t, I can’t--” He closes his eyes and tries to press his forehead against hers, but she's just out of his reach. “Please, Jyn, I need you.”

Jyn jerks away from him. He opens his eyes to see her frowning at him. There is anger in her eyes. She gives him that look often, but this is different. It isn’t the anger that he knows will go away soon. It is betrayal and something like a hot knife twists in his gut.

“No, you don’t. You don’t need me.”

“I do, please, Jyn, please--”

“Then why did you leave me, Cassian?” Jyn demands.

He flinches. “I didn’t… I didn’t…” But he did leave, didn’t he? It wasn't in his plan. It wasn't what he wanted. “They made me go. I didn’t have a choice. Please, Jyn, I would never leave you. I need you.”

Pain and anger are written all over her face. “You always leave in the end, Cassian. It’s who you are.”

She pulls herself to her feet and begins to back away from him. He claws at empty air where she once was, struggling to pull her back to him, but she keeps moving back into the bright light.

“Jyn, stop!” he shouts, his throat burning, his voice raw. She turns on her heels, takes one step, and is no longer there. His head swiveled around the room, but there was no one there but him. The door hadn’t even opened or closed. She’d vanished into nothing. “Come back! I can be better! Don’t leave me!”

But she was gone.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Cassian sat slumped in the chair, one elbow propped on the armrest, his palm pressed against half of his face. It was one of the few things holding him up. He looked as if someone had dumped a glass of water on his head, but he was parched. He hadn’t been given any water today and the drugs had forced him to sweat so much out. Eyes red-rimmed, he glowered like a child at the man sitting before him. He didn’t want to talk. He couldn’t not talk. He thought he saw Jyn skirting the edges of his line of sight, but he couldn’t catch her and confirm.

“Did you know that you started as the youngest Intelligence officer on Alliance record?” the man asked him.

Cassian shook his head. He didn’t know that. It had never occurred to him to ask. Sure, he’d been the young one in the group for years, the green around his ears so obvious as he tried to prove himself, but there had never really been any old operatives either. Spies didn’t have a long life expectancy, especially spies like him that were sent on some of the most dangerous missions.

“You were taken in by the Rebellion at – what? – eight years-old?”

“Nine.”

“And your parents died when you were six. What did you do in those years in between?”

“Rebelled.” Rocks thrown at stormtroopers. Homemade bombs. Digging through the trash. Stolen blankets and ratty shelters with other kids like him. He hadn’t been made for the orphanage. “Survived.”

The man nodded his head in understanding. “You weren’t listed officially as an Intelligence operative until you were fifteen, but that’s not true, is it?”

“I did…what I had to do.” To survive. To make a difference. To do something. He couldn’t just sit on his hands. He was a good soldier, but he couldn’t just be a grunt. As soon as he was taken off Fest, he fought with everyone to learn how to fly. He would never be grounded again. Guns came to him naturally. He was small, quiet, quick. It had been either that or die. “There were things that the older officers couldn’t do. Things I knew I could handle.”

“How old were you when you went on your first mission?” the man asked.

Cassian swallowed, but there was nothing but the dry taste in his mouth. “Twelve. Recon.”

The man let out a low whistle. “That’s very young. You were just a child. I thought the Alliance was above child soldiers.”

“I asked. I-I pestered until they gave me something.”

“But it wasn’t up to you. It was someone else’s decision.” The man leaned forward, his blue eyes keen. It made Cassian glance away. “Someone saw you – saw your desire, your vulnerability, your skills, your malleability – and they put you to use. Someone looked at you and saw a tool, not a child.”

“No, no, it was what I wanted.” Cassian turned his head slightly and pressed his mouth into the heel of his hand.

“Perhaps,” the man told him, “and they used that naive child’s wants to their advantage. Twisted it into something that they could work with. Tell me: how did the mission go?”

Cassian’s eyes darted away from the man as he shook his head again. No, he couldn’t talk about that. It was over. It was in the past. It had happened, but it was done. He hadn’t written the report afterwards. Not officially a soldier, one foot in the Rebellion while the other dragged back in childhood. Stuck in the medbay back on base. Shock, the doctor called it. He thought it was humiliation. He’d curled up in a ball and cried on the cot. The feeling swelled up in him now and he tried to skitter away from him.

“What happened on the mission, Cassian?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Cassian grumbled. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“What wasn’t your fault?” the man pressed. “You need to be honest with me.”

Cassian didn’t even want to be honest with himself. He pushed the memory away, tried to latch onto something else instead. _Jyn – think of Jyn._ Even though he knew he shouldn’t. But she wouldn’t come to him, no matter how hard he sought her out.

Rain spattered on the floor at his feet. His eyes fell to the ground. No, it was dry. They were inside a ship. They were in space. No, it was raining. He could hear the pitter patter. His eyes widened. The world around him grew dark. He could hear someone calling his name underneath the sound of the rain. The man? No, someone else. A harsher growl. Cassian dug his nails into the chair, but it was gone. He was–

_Hunkered down behind a building. It’s dark, in the middle of the night. There are no stars in sight, blocked out by the heavy clouds. Rain is all around them, ruining some of the visibility. He presses himself flat against the cool, metal wall, his heart practically beating out of his chest. They’re too close. They aren’t supposed to be this close. They’re just supposed to watch. What are they doing here?_

_Someone grabs him by the shoulders and he finds himself looking up into a male twi’lek’s face. “You know what to do, boy.”_

_He looks down at his hands. Smaller than he remembered. Completely bare. Less scars and burns. He holds something rectangle in his them. A chrono on the small package blinks at him innocently. He glances back up at the twi’lek’s hard face and then around the corner where there is a ship docked. Stormtroopers in their gleaming white uniforms stand out starkly in the dark, none of them looking their way._

_For how small it is, the package feels heavy in his hands. He knows what to do, but it wasn’t the orders. “We’re supposed to just watch.” His voice is surprisingly small, higher as well. It is the voice of someone young with still a hint of innocence left in them. He’d forgotten what that sounded like. He almost didn’t recognize his own voice._

_The twi’lek shakes him. “Don’t argue with your superior officer, boy, or you’ll never work in this field again.” That is almost more terrifying than what he has to do. Will they leave him here? Abandon him like waste? He so wants to be useful; he wants to be good. “You do this. Be a good soldier. Missions change, evolve. You’ll learn that eventually if you make it long enough.”_

_He will make it; he will learn. He will evolve, just as the missions did._

_Gripping the package protectively against his chest, he throws himself around the wall and into the darkness. He is still small, having not hit his growth spurt yet, but ducks as he runs through the rain towards the ship. Before he can reach it, a stormtrooper appears and he has to launch himself behind a crate from being seen. He is almost certain that the trooper can hear his heartbeat, but he moves on after a few minutes. Taking a deep breath, he braces himself and continues towards the ship. No one sees him when he presses the package on the bottom against the metal and sticks it there. The chrono is impossibly bright to him._

_The trip back to the wall is a mad dash. He can barely see and his legs are shaking underneath him. At one point, he almost slips in a puddle, but he catches his balance and slides back into place. By the time he is crouching against the wall again, his entire body is trembling and he feels like he might topple over. His stomach rolls uncomfortably._

_He looks up at the twi’lek. “What–?”_

_His question is cut off by a loud explosion, its strength blowing him to his hands and knees. Violent orange, red, and yellow colors cut through the darkness. He pushes himself back up, gasping for air, and turns to look back at the ship even as the twi’lek drags him to his feet. The twi’lek is saying something to him, but he can’t hear it. All he hears are the screams. They overtake the rain, his heart, his thoughts, everything until they are the only thing he can focus on._

“Cassian. Cassian. Cassian!”

He gulped down air, practically choking on it, as he was forced back into the room on the ship. The man was close to him now, hovering over him. It would be easy to reach out and snap his neck – if Cassian wasn’t so weak from the drugs and sleep deprivation. His eyes darted around the room wildly and he fought to crawl out of the chair, but the man put hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down.

“You’re fine. You’re in the ship.” So soothing, so calm, again like he was talking to a child. Cassian felt that child’s fear though, as if that night had just happened. It took some coaxing, but he was finally able to look the man in the eyes after a minute and his breathing began to slow. “What did you see?”

“Nothing, I–” An anxious smile twitched onto his face uncomfortably. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Still gentle, but with an edge this time, like a father talking to his son. “What did you see?”

Cassian licked his dry lips. “A ship – an Imperial cargo ship. We were– we were supposed to find out what they were transporting.”

“And did you?”

“I don’t know,” Cassian answered honestly, a little stunned that the question had never occurred to him before. What had been on that ship that had spooked that Twi’lek Intelligence officer? “They never told me.”

“What did you do?”

“We were supposed to just watch it, keep back, not get involved. It was just a recon mission.” His voice was getting small again, like it had been that night, but upset too. Something distraught worked its way through his chest and he couldn’t control it. He was upset and he was angry and he hadn’t even questioned it, not even at twelve. “I was scared they were going to leave me. I was scared I’d be abandoned again. I just did what I was told. I didn’t know… I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” the man told him. “It’s safe to talk here. I won’t judge you.”

The explosion burned in his mind. It had been so bright, like a beacon that could be seen from space. He knew that was ridiculous now, but at the time, he’d been terrified.

“I was the smallest. They knew I could sneak in undetected.”

“They used you.”

“It was the only way. I didn’t know any better. I was told not to question orders.” Cassian buried his face in his hands, willing the flames to go away. Even if they did though, the screams were there, waiting for him. They always came when he was at his most vulnerable. They’d come back on Yavin IV after Scarif. “I blew it up. It was just a cargo ship and I blew it up. There were men in there – not just troopers, but a pilot and mechanic. Regular men that needed a job to support their family.”

“I thought anyone serving under the Empire was bad,” the man said.

Cassian had thought that too, even then. It had scared him, but they were working for the Empire. They were bad. That was what he’d learned on Fest and what he had been taught by the Rebellion. He hadn’t known then. He had never simply spoken to someone as lowly as a cargo pilot. They were just trying to live too. Had his father not been so outspoken in his politics, where would Cassian be?

“I killed them,” Cassian said in a horrified whisper, tears swelling up in his eyes. It was the drugs. He’d never cried under interrogation or torture before. He ached for Jyn, but was suddenly grateful that she wasn’t here to witness this. Would she have been able to look at him the same again? Would she have touched him so willingly? Shared his bed and blanket? Would she have hated him? “I killed them and I…” He looked up at the man, tears burning his eyes, but with a hard glint in them. “And I was glad that they were dead.”

The man sighed and nodded his head. “There it is – the dark truth lurking beneath. You’ve been running from it for years, haven’t you?” Then, strangely, he smiled and Cassian broke, just a little. He had to close his eyes. Jyn was here somewhere and he didn’t want to see her right now. “You did good, Cassian. You did good.”

*

They didn’t bother with the sirens anymore. The lights weren’t nearly as bright either. It didn’t matter. The drugs wouldn’t let him sleep, not really. He sat sprawled against the wall, his head bobbing from side to side. He wished Jyn would come back now, to keep him company, to remind him that he was strong, but he was alone.

With every passing minute, it was getting harder and harder to fight what was happening. It wasn’t just the drugs, but the lack of sleep, food, and water. All of it was dragging him under until it felt like he was drowning. Nowhere near his full strength anymore, it made him more susceptible to attacks and thanks to the drug, most of the attacks were coming from him. His own mind assaulted him and it was difficult to push stray thoughts and memories away. He tried to stay in the room now, focus on that, but the blandness of it made it hard to latch onto anything.

It couldn’t be much longer. The man said he was making progress. He said that Cassian had done good. That was the point. He needed to move past this.

The Rebellion was gone from him or he was gone from it. Hard to tell these days. What use did they have of a compromised spy? Fodder, that was it. He didn’t know any other way of life though, couldn’t remember what it felt like. He’d tried to have a semblance of it with Jyn, but couldn’t even be sure he’d managed it then.

_You always leave in the end, Cassian. It’s who you are._

He couldn’t help it. A part of him would always be like that. He wasn’t a runner like Jyn, who had been jumping across the galaxy on the run for almost her entire life, but he very rarely stayed in one spot. He rarely stayed as one person for long. There were times when he didn’t recognize Cassian Andor.

He’d spent his entire career in the Rebellion leaving people behind, cutting people out of his life. It made things easier. Spies didn’t keep ties. It was why Jyn was such a huge part of his life. She was the anomaly. Leaving her was painful when it had never been hard before. In turn, the people around her became a fixture in his life too. Bodhi’s nervous smile flashed in his mind, a firm handshake from Baze, a knowing expression on Chirrut’s face.

Cassian rubbed his face. He didn’t need them in his mind. It would only distract him. It would make him weak. He couldn’t afford to have any ties. He was–

_Eighteen years-old, scrawny from never eating enough, mud and oil smudged on his face. He’s crouching in a dark alleyway, digging into the wires of a folded over security droid that has at least two feet on him. His tongue stuck out while he works fast, sparks fly as he rewires the main computer in the droid. He shouldn’t be doing this, definitely not since droid programing isn’t his specialty, but the opportunity is too good to pass up. No one will suspect a compromised security droid._

_Finally, with stormtroopers circling the area for a disturbance, he finishes the job and steps back to admire his work. It looks as if nothing ever happened. He wipes at his face, his sweat smearing the grime on his face further, and the reactivates the droid. If he did the job right, he’s got a new droid. If he didn’t, well, hopefully a blaster bolt will be quick to put it down before it kills him._

_The droid’s eyes turn on and shutter open and closed for a second as it processes its new code. Once it’s finished checking all its processes, it turns to face him and then glances at the prone body of the man that used to be its keeper. “What happened to him?”_

_“Accidentally discharged his blaster on himself,” he replies, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice._

_The droid returns to look at him. “There’s a 94 percent chance that you’re lying and you actually shot him.”_

_“And what do you make of that?”_

_“Well.” The droid pulls itself to its feet, towering over him. “He was an idiot, so it probably serves him right.”_

_An eager smile spills onto his face. Not the response he was expecting. Maybe he did something with the droid’s personality while messing around with the code, but there is nothing to be fixed now. He holds out a hand, which seems to catch the droid off guard, and says, “I’m–”_

No. Cassian smacked his head against the wall and knocked himself back into the room. He was on a ship. He was being interrogated. He’d been drugged. He didn’t want to think of that. It hurt to think of Kaytoo. There was nothing he could do to bring his friend back. Everything that had made Kaytoo himself had been the result of an over-eager boy who thought he was a man and knew everything. A fortuitous accident. It couldn’t replicated. Kay had died as surely as a human to save him and Jyn, to keep the mission alive on Scarif.

Perhaps, if he had made it, Cassian wouldn’t be here now. He might’ve convinced Cassian to do something else after the breach. Come with some sort of statistical analysis that told him how stupid he was. The pain of losing him was made so much worse by the drugs that forced memories on Cassian.

Kaytoo’s last words, how Cassian couldn’t get to him. He’d never had someone sacrifice themselves for him. He did not want to experience it ever again. That was another reason why Jyn was a problem.

*

“There’s still something we haven’t talked about,” the man said as he injected another round of drugs in Cassian’s arm. Cassian didn’t even fight it this time. He sat there, too weak and exhausted, taking a deep breath as he was instructed to make the injection easier. When his heart began to race this time, he didn’t panic. He was able to latch onto the man’s words. “Something you’ve been avoiding.”

Cassian licked his cracked lips. “I’ve-I’ve told you everything you’ve asked.”

“True, but you are very clever.” The man smiled and stood up. “You still haven’t said who brought you here.”

“I did,” Cassian insisted. “I came here – of my own violation.”

“No, not here,” the man replied, looking around the room. When he looked back at Cassian, he gestured to him sitting in the chair. “ _Here_. Who made you the man you are today? Who took a child and twisted him into one of the most dangerous weapons?”

He didn’t want to talk about it. The man had asked him before, but he’d managed to deflect it long enough until the hallucination of his first mission and kills hit him. He’d hoped that the man might be led to believe that the Twi’lek that had pressed the bomb in his hands was that person, but it appeared it had been a false hope. It hadn’t been true. Cassian couldn’t even remember that Twi’lek’s name; he’d been killed a year later.

“Who let you on that first mission?” the man asked. “Who allowed a child to be placed into a position to assassinate the enemy?”

Cassian’s head jerked to the side. “I don’t–” The drugs were strong. Once he might’ve said that he was stronger, but after a week of being broken down, he knew that was a lie. His blunt and broken nails clawed at the chair. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter. It happened.”

“No? I think it does. Otherwise you would’ve said something by now.”

“Isn’t it in the file?” Cassian asked.

“Not the true beginning of your story,” the man pointed out. “Files on spies, even ones meticulous as you, are notoriously misleading. As I said, it has you listed as officially joining at fifteen, but we both know that isn’t true.” To be honest, he’d never looked at his own file. It would’ve been easy, despite not having actual access. Kaytoo had offered once after a particularly bad mission that had Cassian snarling after leaving his debriefing, but he had said no. He knew his record. “Who pushed you to do monstrous things? Was it under the guise of honor? Duty? Hope?”

_Rebellions are built on hope._

A child’s naivety, for sure. He had loved it then – made it feel like he could be a part of something wonderful, if only they would let him. As small as it had been when he’d first been scooped up, the Rebellion had seemed so huge compared to his fights on Fest. He had believed it once, hadn’t it? He couldn’t even recall when the word had started to taste sour on his tongue. It hadn’t bothered him as much as he might have thought when he realized it. People like him weren’t built to last on hope. They did the things others could not so that they could look at the stars and see something bright in the future.

He’d thought… For a moment, for a time – and it could’ve been months or years or days – that hope felt real to him again. It shined like a kyber crystal, demanding to be heard. It burned in a fierce, smoldering glare and a hard face filled with a need he’d never known before. It was in a smile meant only for him, a small body pressed against his, fingers running through his hair. It was in a heartbeat that matched his in a way he’d not expected.

But it wasn’t here now. He didn’t feel any of that anymore. Instead, a hollow space sat deep in his chest and he felt almost…normal, like he had felt before a woman with a heart made of kyber blew her way into his life. It was not a comforting thought, but one he could live with. He’d lived with a lot.

“Cassian, where are you?”

He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be with Jyn. But she wouldn’t come to him and he was afraid that she never would again.

“I need to know,” the man said. “Who used you? Who left you to rot?”

“No one” – Cassian shook his head – “no one left me.” He was the one that left. He was good at it. He’d done a lot of leaving since being taken off Fest. “I did this to myself.”

The man sat down slowly. “You honestly think that, don’t you?” His gaze was too piercing for Cassian to handle, not while under the influence of the drugs. Too blue. “You believe that you destroyed yourself.” He sounded sad, like he was pitying Cassian. It didn’t sit well with him. “You didn’t make yourself a monster, Cassian.”

“I killed them,” Cassian whispered. “I planted the bombs. I shot them. I left people to die. Even when it didn’t feel right, I did them – because they were– They were my orders.”

“You’ve always been so good at following orders. So eager to listen and please.” The man clucked his tongue. It was sad and pitiful. Cassian barely felt like a man after everything that he’d been dragged through, not just this past week. He had left her. What kind of person did that make him? “But who is more monstrous: the person carrying out the orders or the person making them? You were a child when you started, Cassian, and someone used that to their advantage.”

Cassian mumbled something unintelligible, shaking his head again, thinking of the bomb in his hands, of being pulled in multiple directions, of a man in his sights and his finger on the trigger and the trickle of hesitation that ran down his spine for the first time in years. A hand on the shoulder, a faint smile that almost looked proud, a tone that didn’t allow room for arguing, a disappointed glare, a displeased frown. It all began to run together. He tried to shove them away, but they kept coming, more and more until–

“You’re going to tell him.”

Cassian whips around and finds himself standing in the control room of the Alliance back on Yavin IV. Which is really quite impossible. Yavin IV was abandoned as a base years ago after the Empire’s assault and its near destruction by the Death Star. It’s familiar to him though, almost comfortable, but the suddenness of being here destroys any sense of comfort he might find in the dark lighting and green glow of the controls.

Finally, when Cassian spots the source of the voice, he snaps into attention without even thinking. Old habits will always die hard. He could slink around base all he wanted, but around a few people, he would fall into place. “Sir.”

General Draven’s lips twist into a wry grin, looking more like a scowl though. “You were always a good soldier, Andor. A damn shame what happened really.”

His old commanding officer doesn’t look much different than before. In fact, he looks more like he did on Yavin IV than he probably does now. A little younger, hair a little redder, more spite filling his veins. He knows that many of the other generals in the Rebel Alliance don’t like him and he doesn’t care. He does what he has to do to get the job done and like it or not, without him and his network, the Rebellion would’ve died long ago. He knows that hope isn’t meant for him and he accepts it wholeheartedly.

Cassian thought he could be like that – tried his best for years to emulate it – but he fell short somehow.

“I can still get the job done,” Cassian says. “I can still work.”

Draven tilts his head. “Can you though? You were compromised a long time before the hack.”

The accusation burns hotly in Cassian’s gut and he feels a flash of irritation. Before he never would have thought something like that – he did what he was told and that was that – but things changed, things neither one of them anticipated. He hates the way Draven talks about it though – like it’s a bad thing, like hope is some sort of disease, like he’s been ruined – when Cassian wouldn’t be alive without it. None of them would be alive.

A dark expression falls over Cassian’s face. “I don’t see why that has anything to do with this.”

“Don’t you?” Draven sits down in a chair on the other side of the table and examines him carefully. “You were good, Andor, damn good, one of the best operatives I had. Finding you was like striking gold. It was a tough decision and I knew it would condemn me, but you were so desperate and willing.” He doesn’t look ashamed of what he did, but then, he never does in public. He keeps that for the dark as well. “I’m not going to sit here and say that I did it because it was what you wanted. That would be a lie. I knew what it would do to you in the end and I knew what it would make me.”

“I was a child,” Cassian snaps, pressing his hands on the table and leaning forward. “I was afraid. You knew I didn’t know what I was getting into and yet you let it happen anyways. You pushed me into it.”

“Damn right I did,” Draven responds firmly. “I saw you after that first mission. All shook up, scared out of your mind, like a skittish lothcat, but hungry for more. I knew even before then you wouldn’t give up. If not that mission, then the next and the next, until you got what you wanted. No, you didn’t know what it was, but you needed something to hold onto and I saw that need in your eyes. I couldn’t let that go to waste, not when so few actually have it. You were capable of so many things. I knew you would do what needed to be done, no matter the cost, and so I helped you grow.”

Cassian sneers. “Is that what you call it? Helping me grow? Helping me become a man?”

“Not just any man,” Draven says. “My man. And you were.” This time, he does scowl. “Then she came.”

“Don’t,” Cassian warns, “don’t you dare put this on her.”

“The effect she had on you in such a brief amount of time was astronomical,” Draven continues, ignoring the way Cassian was curling in on himself in anger. “It was a disaster. She changed you. One day, you were the perfect operative and the next you were questioning the simplest of orders.”

“They weren’t the right ones!” Cassian exclaims.

“That never mattered to you before!” Draven booms, jumping to his feet. “You didn’t care if the orders were right or wrong, good or bad. Maybe you thought about it at first, but after a while, it never even crossed your mind.” Cassian flinches away because it’s the truth. After a while, he didn’t care. What was another mark against his soul anyways? What was more blood on his red-stained hands? “In just a few days, you were willing to throw everything away and rebel against your own people – for her and her ridiculous talk of hope.”

Cassian clenches his fists at his side. “It saved your life and the Rebellion’s, didn’t it? She did that.”

“Maybe so,” Draven concedes, “but I knew you would never be the same after. You could play the good soldier, the devoted spy, but there’s nothing worse for a covert operative than being attached. She distracted you – made you weak – made you think of something else other than the Rebellion.”

“Is that so bad?”

“For people in our line of work? I’m afraid it is. We don’t get that luxury.” Draven sighs, like he’s tired of the conversation, while Cassian is still burning on the inside. What were rebellions for if not hope? “And she’s going to do it again. I know it. You’ve grown weak, Cassian. You miss her, don’t you? How badly? Have you even thought of the Rebellion?”

Guilt flares like a sun in Cassian’s mind. “Everything I’ve done, I did for the Rebellion.”

“Maybe you could’ve said that once and it would’ve been true, but not anymore.” Draven turns away from him, half in shadow, half in light. He’s been like that for as long as Cassian has known him. It’s the way of a spy. It’s smiling in a man’s face before shooting them in the back. Cassian thinks of Tivik and all the other people that had the misfortune of crossing his path. He thinks of Jyn and what might happen to her. “Now, because of her, you’re going to tell him – and you’re going to die. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Draven!” Cassian yelled, but the General had vanished. “Draven!”

The floor began to crumble underneath him, causing him to stagger against the table, until it was gone completely and he tumbled into a dark hole. There wasn’t even time for Cassian to shout before he slammed back into the chair, gripping onto the armrests for dear life. He was hyperventilating and his eyes had widened to a near painful point, but he wasn’t falling anymore. It occurred to him after a minute of trying to calm down that he’d never left the room in the first place. It had been another hallucination, like the one with Jyn. He slumped back in the chair, sweat dripping from his brow, and tried to steady his breathing.

The man, who had been crouched in front of him before, stood up and gazed at him curiously. “Draven then. He’s listed as the person that officially recruited you to the Rebellion, but that’s it.”

Cassian snapped to attention, but then looked away again, keeping his mouth shut. Had he said the name allowed? He thought that he’d still been locked away in his mind in the fake control room on Yavin IV.

“Oh, don’t worry, Cassian,” the man told him with a pleased grin. “We already know who he is. General Davits Draven of the Rebellion, head of Alliance Intelligence. You directly reported to him, did you not?”

The man’s words took half the fight out of Cassian. He already knew who Draven was? They did what they could to keep that specific information in-house. It worked to their advantage. Spies, after all, worked in the dark and so did their leader. It turned him into something of a legend on base, one that he neither encouraged nor argued against. He’d worked in Intelligence nearly all his life, even during the Clone Wars, before the Empire had been formed. If the man and the people he worked with already knew about Draven, then Cassian was not the first Rebellion Intelligence operative to cross paths with them.

“He found you, didn’t he? A child, scared, alone, needing something to make sense of the world, needing a purpose beyond throwing rocks at stormtroopers.” The man tilted his head. The force of his gaze was enough to make Cassian squirm in his seat, if only because the drugs refused to let him sit still for long so soon after being injected with them. “A boy with the desire to do anything to find a place where they fit, a boy willing to go to extraordinary and terrible lengths to have their revenge.”

Feelings that he thought he’d buried, emotions long since forgotten, crawled back up his throat and he had to put a hand to his mouth to keep from letting out a strangled sob. He didn’t even know where it had come from. It must have been in part due to the drugs and the utter exhaustion that hung over him like a smothering fog. He bit his lip behind his hand so hard that he tasted blood and closed his eyes, willing it to leave him, but it only intensified.

He could feel it again. Six years-old, watching his father’s head rocket back from a blaster bolt, hearing his mother scream. His seventh birthday, alone and on the streets, scrounging for scraps to survive. The Rebel ship that had taken him off Fest had seemed impossibly large and terrifying. He’d never been on a ship before; he hadn’t been able to sleep until they’d landed again. The loneliness of the orphanage on base, his inability or refusal to connect with other children that had lost their parents the same as him. The awe and desperation that had clawed at him as he watched Rebel soldiers walk around with a sense of purpose.

He’d felt adrift for so long. He couldn’t remember what home felt like. He didn’t let anyone take care of him, actively struggled against any form of affection that reminded him too much of his parents, and fought to take on responsibilities meant for those older than him.

A woman sighing to another when they thought he was asleep, _“There’s no smoothing out the rough edges on that one. He’s never going to be adopted. Some kids just don’t bounce back.”_

And he’d been flooded with shame and anger. Bounce back from what? He’d survived, hadn’t he? Other kids his age on Fest hadn’t been so lucky. They couldn’t handle the harsh conditions or the fight. Some clung to the meager hope that the orphanage gave them, back on Fest and on the Rebel base alike, while others just…disappeared. It did not take him long to realize that they’d died. But he hadn’t. He was still alive; he was still fighting.

Kriff, wasn’t that what he was doing now? Cassian let out a slightly hysterical bark of laughter. That was all he’d been doing since he was six years-old. Fighting, surviving. Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten how to just live, maybe as far back as Fest. Now that he’d had a taste of it again though, it was hard to go back.

Cassian didn’t even realize that tears were sliding down his face until he heard the man saying soothingly, “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’ve buried a lot, haven’t you? Not just the dead or your sins, but everything that made you who you are. You were a remarkable soldier and spy. There aren’t many have what it takes to be on your level. Even fewer have what it takes to sacrifice as much of yourself as you did to actually do it. I’m proud of you. We’ve made a lot of progress, more than I could have hoped.”

Nodding his head, Cassian tried to reign in everything. He barely had control over his own movements, his head bobbing up and down weakly, much less his emotions and if he didn’t get those in check, who knew what else would come spilling out of his mind and mouth. He was afraid to open that door again. He’d kept it locked for so long, even he didn’t know what monsters lied within.

“There’s just one more thing before I can make my decision on you,” the man said. “We need to talk about Jyn Erso.”

Cassian stilled and looked up at the man with a suddenly cold stare. Everything else vanished immediately as he snapped back into the present, leaving him utterly empty. A hard, flat expression fell over his face before he answered, “No.”


	3. Chapter 3

_“You’re leaving?” she asks, standing in the open doorway of their room. He can tell that she’s trying to be strong, but the anger that she’s putting in her voice is only there to hide the fear._

_“Yes.” He doesn’t turn around to face her – can’t, because he knows what he’ll see and that will shatter him into pieces – and keeps on packing a duffel bag. Even after so much has changed, almost all of his things can still fit in one bag. It’s sadder now than it might have once been._

_“Why?”_

_He stills, only for a second, but that tiny hesitation is enough to propel her forward and the door shuts behind her, leaving them alone. She’s cornering him. He’s been cornered before by a lot worse, but this feels like a cold knife is being slowly dragged down his spine. She’s always been fierce, but this is different. Being alone with her right now is too dangerous. It’ll make him falter. He wouldn’t have even blinked at a question like that before her._

_“I have to go,” he tells her._

_She scoffs. “You have to? Don’t be ridiculous.”_

_“It’s the only way,” he says, and he wonders how many times he has said that. She’s never questioned him before when he left for missions, but he knows the question was there and he always thought the same thing. He had to do it; it was the only way. It’s always been like that, for as long as he can remember. A finger on the trigger, a body at his feet, a voice silenced forever, a smile in the face of ruin. The only way._

_However, she must sense the finality in his words because she steps right behind him, placing a hand on his arm. It causes him to freeze and close his eyes. He wants to revel in her touch, but he can’t. The ache that pierces him is bad enough. “We can fix this,” she insists in a rush of words. “But you can’t leave. We can make it right again. I know we can as long as you–”_

_“No!” he snaps, whirling around on her finally. “We can’t.”_

_She blinks at him, eyes wide with shock. They’ve gotten into plenty of spats before and bickered with each other – it’s just a part of their nature, two sides of a coin always butting against one another – but this is another kind of monster, one she hasn’t seen in years. He’s mad at her for putting this on him, even though he knows it’s not her fault. It can’t be. He let her in. He allowed this to happen. He wanted it – wanted her. And now it’s hurting him, like a blaster shot that went all the way to the bone. He’s mad because he wants exactly what she does and he knows – he fucking knows – that he can’t have it and it’s his own damn fault._

_He can’t fix it, not the way she wants._

_Slowly, that shock fades away, shuttered into anger again, and she pulls away from him. He instantly misses her contact and close presence, but doesn’t reach out to her like every inch of him is screaming to do. The fact that he doesn’t must strike her because there’s hurt on her face too. It has been a very long time since he has been the cause of that kind of pain for her and it’s both the worst and best thing he could’ve done in the situation._

_Still, she resolves herself, juts her chin up. She won’t let go, not that easily. She’s stronger than him. “Then I can go with you. We can do it together. I know how to survive.”_

_“No,” he says quietly, “it’s too dangerous.”_

_“What? Am I too weak all of a sudden? I took care of myself on my own for years.”_

_He shakes his head and repeats, “It’s too dangerous.”_

_She stares at him for a moment, trying to read him. He’s become easier for her to read, despite himself. He doesn’t know how it happened except that it did and he liked it. He doesn’t like it now though. If she can see what he’s trying to hide, he doesn’t know how he’ll be able to hold up against her. Already the small distance between them feels like a chasm and it’s too much._

_Finally, she says, “You don’t want me to come with you, do you?”_

_It’s not for the reasons she thinks. It’s not what he wants. And he knows how much it will hurt her, how much it will sting and wreck this thing that they’d created between them, but he says, “No, I don’t,” and watches with an impassive expression as her face crumples._

_She bites her lip, holding in a slew of words, and nods her head in a short, jerky manner. He keeps his mouth closed and his eyes blank as she turns on her heels and walks out of the room. When the door shuts, he takes a moment to breathe and then returns to his packing. He leaves the one photo of the two of them behind on the bed even though it demands to be taken. It’s safer here anyways. He can’t afford to bring it with him. He doesn’t want to bring danger to her doorstep because he knows she’ll invite it in out of spite._

_Instead of leaving him with the slight, empty feeling he usually gets when he steps out of someone’s life, it feels as if a surgeon has taken a scalpel and scraped him hollow. This pain, he knows, won’t go away with time._

*

They’d pumped him with more drugs to dangerous levels. Because of his own stubbornness. He was resisting again. His mind flittered briefly to the photo he’d left behind, but he couldn’t focus on it for long. The drugs were too strong, pulling him from one memory to hallucination to the next. He could’ve sworn his mother whispered some old lullaby to him, but that was impossible. She was long dead.

Due to the potency of the drugs, they didn’t return for him for at least a day. Hell, it might’ve been a week. He was in no state to form coherent thoughts, much less sentences. He would’ve been useless, incapable of answering even the simplest of questions without drifting elsewhere. Of course, that was where they wanted him. So weak and confused that they could pry information out of him. He needed to be somewhat in the room though for it to work or they’d get nothing but gibberish.

When they finally dragged him back to the room, the two men had to basically carry him. He couldn’t find his feet for longer than a few seconds. In the room, they dropped him in his seat and he fell hard, wincing at the pain. The drugs was making his bones begin to feel like glass, although it might’ve been from the lack of food. They fed him periodically, whenever he pleased the person interrogating him, like a reward, but after this last time, he had been given nothing in return.

“You look terrible, Cassian,” the man informed him. “How are you feeling?”

Somehow, Cassian managed a very pitiful smile. “Never…better.”

“Using humor to deflect now, are we?” The man shook his head. “You must be even worse off than I thought.”

Well, Cassian couldn’t deny that. His head tipped back and he chuckled, though there was no humor in it. He was worn down so thin. He’d been captured before, interrogated and tortured, but nothing like this. There had been no kindness in them, no pleasantries to remind him of his humanity, no back and forth. This…extraction felt so much worse. It was like they were digging him out of a grave, but only one limb at a time, while his head was still under, when all he wanted to do was be left alone in peace.

“Are you ready to talk about her?” the man asked.

Cassian held his hands out, though he kept his arms on the chair. “What do you want to know?”

“She’s still with the Rebellion, yes?”

“As far as I know,” Cassian replied as evenly as he could. “I haven’t seen her in a few weeks. Been aboard a ship.”

The man smiled at him. “The lives of those in the Rebellion can be a fickle thing, but she’s still alive. We received confirmation of it this morning. Just couldn’t be for sure if she was acting on her own or not.”

That got his attention. His eyes focused on the man. “You’re keeping tabs on her?”

“Well, she’s important to you, isn’t she?” the man said. There was humor in his voice and even on his face as he watched Cassian’s reaction. Cassian couldn’t school himself nearly as well before. His eagerness to know more must’ve been betrayed on his face because the man nodded his head to himself. “We were wondering what she might think of this entire thing – you being here, telling us your secrets, us…not so delicately pulling them out.”

Cassian turned his head away. “I’m not so sure she’d be unhappy about it.”

“Oh?”

“We didn’t…” Cassian closed his eyes. He thought about the last time he had seen her – the way her face had fallen. He’d done that and he’d done it on purpose. “We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

“So she doesn’t know that you came scrambling towards a potential enemy the second you were abandoned?”

“All she knows,” Cassian sighed as he opened his eyes, “is that I was compromised and my presence endangered the Rebellion, so I was forced out. You cut off a finger to save the hand. It’s that simple.”

The man scrolled through a datapad on his lap. For once, he seemed content with Cassian’s answer, but then, it was the whole truth. He’d always been scant on details of his missions with her, out of habit and for her own good, but this had been different. He had given her nothing than what she already knew.

“We admittedly don’t have many records of her,” the man pointed out. “Our attack on the Alliance was very specific. She’s not assigned to Intelligence.”

“Jyn, Intelligence?” Cassian would’ve laughed if he was stronger. “She’d rather blast her way through something than sneak.”

“And yet you two worked very well together.” The man set the datapad aside. “Everyone more or less knows what happened on Scarif. She’s a very wanted woman by the Empire. There’s quite a sum on that pretty head of hers.”

“As large as mine?”

The man grinned. “You don’t have an official bounty on your head yet – we haven’t agreed on a price with the Empire for the other half of the information we retrieved – but once they do, I’m sure they’ll be frothing at the mouths to get a hold of you.”

So the data they’d stolen from the Alliance wasn’t completely known yet. They’d only released enough of it to prove that they were serious and had legitimate info. It didn’t matter. He was still compromised and the Alliance had left him in the wind. All he had was himself and thanks to the drugs there were plenty of moments when he didn’t know if he even had that.

“That’ll be a nice chunk of credits for you,” Cassian mused. “Bonuses for…everyone on the ship.”

“Well, don’t cast us as the villains just yet,” the man told him. “We control the flow of information. Not all of it has to get passed to the Empire, just what we deem necessary. They wouldn’t be any wiser.” He leaned forward, his fingers interlocking on his knees. “If we can gain more by giving less, then that’s the route we’ll take.”

Cassian watched the man for as long as he could. It was hard to look straight at someone, especially the person who was responsible for interrogating him for who knew how long, but he had to be appeared somewhat straight for this. He couldn’t falter. (He couldn’t think of Jyn or Kaytoo or anyone that meant anything to him.) “I can be useful.”

“That’s what we’re hoping for, Cassian,” the man said intently.

“Do you work for the Empire?”

The man leaned back in his seat. “No, we work for ourselves. The Empire, the Alliance… They’re all corrupt in the end. You’ve seen that firsthand – been a part of it.” He tilted his head in that curious manner that Cassian had come to recognize. This was a very observant man, more so than him. “Can you live with that?”

A thin, cold smile crossed Cassian’s face. “I’ve lived with a lot of things.”

And he had and he would. That was the way his life had been since he’d been born. There was nothing that he’d had to bounce back from because that was just who he was.

*

The food they gave him was almost too rich and the water too cold, but he was running completely on fumes and had to force himself to eat and drink. He went slowly, knowing that if he devoured everything like his stomach was demanding, he’d only managed to get himself sick and he needed this substenance is he was going to make it through the next round. He didn’t know what it would be or if it would be anything at all, but he had to be ready.

This was the first time he’d been in a room on the ship that wasn’t his white holding cell or the cozy office they’d turned into an interrogation room. He sat at the end of a table in the kitchen, far away from any of the things that could do some damage. They seemed to trust him more, but not enough to put a knife in his hands. The only utensil they’d given him was a fork, but he mostly picked at the food with his fingers, not caring about manners. Two guards stood a few feet away from him, seemingly unconcerned with him.

Once he was finished, they instructed him to put his plate away and then took him back to his holding cell. A mat was lying on the floor against the wall, the only other thing in the room besides himself. They waited until he was standing over it, tentatively testing it, before turning off the lights.

Oh. They were letting him _rest_.

The drugs were still in his system, but he hadn’t been given another dose. He could only be grateful that the man hadn’t asked more questions about Jyn. Truth be told, Cassian had been nervous that they would and he hadn’t known if he would be capable of beating around them. Those drugs were insanely strong. He’d only managed to barely avoid everything spilling out of him the second he’d been told that they were keeping tabs on her.

How was she doing? What was she doing? Where had they seen her? Did she look okay? Was she acting out angrily or staying cool? How close had they gotten to her? What did they want from her?

He should’ve known that he couldn’t keep her completely out of this. If they knew anything about him, they knew about her. He had a feeling Draven had made a point of mentioning her in his record out of irritation or spite, like his association with her was some sort of mark against him when it came to picking operatives for missions. He had never thought of it like that. If anything, he’d pushed himself even harder after meeting her.

A man with nothing to lose will do anything, but a man fighting for something is truly dangerous. He hadn’t understand that before. All he’d had was the Rebellion and while he’d thought that it was the only thing that mattered and he’d never stopped believing in it, somewhere along the line, it had become a habit. _Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._ But what then? What after? It was impossible to imagine what would happen to him if they did accomplish their goals.

Peace wasn’t meant for someone like him.

Cassian laid down on the mat, allowing his body to relax, and closed his eyes. The last time he’d slept in a bed, Jyn’s warm body had been curled up next to his. She made herself smaller when she slept, like she was trying to hide or make herself less of a target. She didn’t cling to him or throw herself over him. It had taken her time before she’d been comfortable enough to not try to put some space in between them even after they’d done nearly everything to eliminate space just moments before.

It was dangerous to think of that now, but he couldn’t help himself. Maybe it was on purpose, meant to lull him into a state of contentment or peace to trick him into thinking the worst was over, but he needed this. He wouldn’t ignore the possibility that it was something sinister and so he didn’t relax entirely, but before he knew it, sleep took over and he was unconscious. Dreams came, but nothing concrete enough for him to remember. She wasn’t in them. He had to wonder if that meant she really was gone from him.

*

“You look like shit, Andor.”

Cassian didn’t bother trying to hide the shock on his face. It wouldn’t do him any good right now to be unreadable. The person leaning against the wall in the corner of the room was someone he recognized and knew. Maybe not well – definitely not well, if he was here – but still unexpected. He was clearly older, but clean-shaven and much healthier-looking than he’d ever been before. The man that had been interrogating him sat behind the desk, watching Cassian’s reaction carefully, and then motioned for him to sit.

He did so, slowly, his eyes never leaving the newcomer. “You’re dead.”

“Am I?” their joiner laughed. “No, no, it’s not the drugs. Kriff, I’d hate to think of why you’d hallucinate me. I mean, we did some terrible, shady things together, but nothing too memorable.”

“Anthan, I watched you die,” Cassian said carefully.

A too cheerful smile found its way onto Anthan’s face. He’d always been quick to smile, easy to make friends, chipper, the kind of guy you could have a drink with after a mission well done. People in the Rebellion had liked him and they’d been sad when he’d been killed in action. Much like him, Anthan had spent time in the orphanage, taken in by the Rebellion when he was ten. He’d been just as scrawny as Cassian, who arrived only a few months after him. Unlike Cassian, he had bounced back, adopted when he was eleven. He’d transferred into Intelligence a year after Cassian became officially listed as an officer.

Anthan would joke that Cassian was far too serious. The other boy was only a year older, but he acted as if Cassian was a boring old man, goading him into doing things that he never would’ve done if it was another operative. At fifteen, he was already higher ranked than Anthan, but that didn’t seem to bother him. Anthan was the first person that Cassian had gotten drunk with when he was sixteen and he was also the first person who was pleased, elated even, at Cassian having hijacked an Imperial security droid.

“You watched me walk into a factory to save a man left behind,” Anthan replied, like he was correcting a child and all too happy to watch their world burn. “A factory that blew up when the charges you planted prematurely went off, killing me, a fellow operative, and the people inside.” He held up a finger. “Ah, well, not me. And you didn’t kill that operative either. He was already dead.”

“You faked your death.” Cassian sank back in his seat. “Why?”

“Cassian, you of all people should know that short of committing treason, the only way to leave the Rebellion is to die and even then, treason probably ends in death as well.” Anthan dropped his hand, folding his arms across his chest, and shrugged his shoulders carelessly. “And well, I’d already done the former so I knew I had to leave before I was found out.”

Anger flared in Cassian’s mind, but something worse, something he couldn’t remember feeling. Betrayal. It had been a long time since someone he’d thought he trusted actually betrayed him, but even worse, it had never been so personal. Cassian had been twenty-three when Anthan had ran into that factory and never came back out. He’d spent years believing that he’d killed one of his own due to an idiot mistake.

“The Rebellion honored you like a hero,” Cassian snapped. “We _mourned_ you.”

“Did you?” Anthan scoffed. “You’re a cold one, Andor, always have been. Even when I convinced you to drink with me, you remained distant. I didn’t think you were capable of caring about anyone except that bloody robot.”

Cassian bit back a scowl and just glowered. He couldn’t deny the truth. He had kept everyone at an arm’s length, even Anthan with his friendly personality. Cassian had always found him a bit much, but he was good on missions when it came to dealing with people. He’d taught Cassian how to at least pretend to be open, to smile more, to laugh, to be casual and act careless. Sometimes, he couldn’t be sure if Anthan was acting or if he really was like that. It could make a mission go smoothly or blow up in their face and it never seemed to make a difference to him either way.

At the end of the day though, after Anthan’s death, Cassian had learned to put him out of his mind. He couldn’t think about his mistakes when he was laying down his next charges; he could only focus on what he was doing now. Eventually, Anthan joined the box where Cassian put all his other regrets and sins that he could ignore.

“You hacked the Alliance records,” Cassian stated.

“For the right price, of course,” Anthan replied. “Imagine my surprise when I found out that you were still alive and operating. Hell, all those deep cover missions, I thought for sure you’d be dead.” He whistled, almost like he was admiring Cassian for having survived this long. They hadn’t turned out that much differently: both of them had thought the other dead. “I had to dig around deep to find more on you. Kriff, your file was so dry. But when I found out about your involvement on Scarif, wow, that was surprising.”

“It’s not in there?” Cassian asked, feeling a little surprised himself.

Anthan shook his head. “I don’t know how Draven did it, but he managed to keep that kind of important detail out of there. I suppose he didn’t want anyone knowing of your involvement, not you, his favorite operative. If the Empire knew about that, you wouldn’t be of much use in Intelligence.”

It all made sense. A part of Cassian had wondered how he could still do Intelligence missions when everyone knew about the rebel group that had infiltrated an Imperial base to steal the Death Star plans. They hadn’t been a part of the huge ceremony, only given smaller medals after, but people still knew them. It was partly why Jyn couldn’t do many Intelligence missions with him unless her appearance was altered somehow. For Cassian though, it had never been an issue. Once he’d healed, he was back on board.

This time, when Anthan flashed a smile, Cassian was finally able to recognize that smile for what it truly was. It was a snake’s smile, not one from a friend. He didn’t know how he had never recognized it before. “They played up Jyn Erso’s role instead to cover it up. She’s a pretty, little thing, isn’t she? Feisty too, considering her record before joining the Rebellion. We only targeted Alliance Intelligence records, but I was intrigued by the woman that showed up in yours more than anyone else.” He laughed outright. “Draven really doesn’t like her, does he? You can tell in the reports.”

“Draven doesn’t like anyone really,” Cassian pointed out.

“True,” Anthan said, “but did you know that the Alliance keeps the most inane records available?” He pushed away from his spot at the wall and moved to the desk where a datapad was lying. With a few hits, he was able to find what he was looking for. “Here’s a request for a room transfer.” Anthan’s green eyes were practically glowing with mirth when he glanced back at Cassian. “You shared a room with her? Force be good, that’s one hell of a move for a man who could barely manage a hug without faking everything.” He set the datapad down and eagerly moved to the seat across from him that the man usually sat at during the interrogations. “I’d love to get my hands on the woman that thawed that cold heart of yours. She must be something.”

Cassian almost shot up out of his seat, but a hand on his shoulder from one of the guards roughly shoved him back down. “You stay away from her!”

Anthan hooted with laughter and tossed a look over his shoulder at the man, who still had not said a word and was merely watching the exchange. “Did you hear that? Honestly, what did you do to him? That’s more emotion I’ve seen out of him than the entire time I knew him.”

Finally, the man stood up and nodded his head. “That’s enough goading.”

The guard pulled his hand off Cassian’s shoulder and took a step back. Cassian sank back in his seat, trying to appear relaxed, but he was having trouble wrapping his mind around everything. He’d slept most of the drugs off, but the aftereffects were still there, creeping up on him. He remembered a moment in the mess hall when Anthan had a laughing female pilot in his lap, but suddenly he pictured Jyn instead and knew that wasn’t right. He shook his head, trying to get the false memory out.

“What do you think?” the man asked.

“I’ve been monitoring everything since the data was stolen and it all checks out,” Anthan replied casually. “It appears as if the Rebellion did cut their losses with him. Remarkable Draven didn’t suggest just killing or locking him up since Andor knows too much. Draven’s a cold, cynical bastard like that.”

It honestly was a miracle that it hadn’t been suggested. Spies were dangerous alive for what they had in their heads; they were even worse if they were captured. But then Draven had never been concerned with Cassian. He had always believed that Cassian would make the right choice if he knew that he couldn’t take the interrogation or at least that was what he had thought. Maybe Draven’s faith in him truly had waned after Jyn.

“Can we use him?” the man questioned. “Or should we cut our losses as well?”

Anthan turned to survey Cassian, who stared right back at him. Of course it made Cassian uneasy to know that his fate was in the hands of a man that had not only betrayed him but also the Rebellion. He’d been leery of Anthan before, but because he hadn’t liked people trying to buddy up with him. It also made him wary to know that their first meeting in years hadn’t gone smoothly on his end. He’d been antagonistic towards Anthan. He should have been calmer, but instead, he’d been angry, volatile even.

“I think,” Anthan began without looking away from him, “that as long as we don’t touch his precious Jyn, he’ll do the job. He’s got nowhere else to go. The Rebellion won’t take him. The Empire will kill him.” Anthan turned his attention to the man. “Cassian Andor will always be that boy that needs something to believe in. We give him the ‘good’ missions and he’ll be a good, little operative.”

Cassian closed his eyes and breathed. _I can be useful. I can still get the job done._

“Alright then,” the man said. “Take him to his room. Welcome to the club, Cassian.”

When he opened his eyes, Cassian saw the man and Anthan both looking at him intently. And there, tucked in the corner of the room, as if she’d been there the entire time just out of his line of sight, is Jyn. She’s wearing her normal clothes, but with his Alliance jacket on top. It’s too large for her, of course, but she was always fond of wearing it when they were stationed on Hoth while in the sanctuary of his quarters. She lifts one finger to her lips, the sleeve of his jacket falling down to reveal the pale skin of her hand, and then winks at him.

Cassian shook the man’s hand and didn’t even blink.

*

As they walked down the hallway, Cassian kept quiet, his mind just as silent. Anthan walked next to him, pep in his step, whistling a light tune. Only one guard was with them now, the one that had shoved Cassian back into his seat; he walked a few paces behind them, relaxed, his blaster at his side. They walked with purpose now that Cassian didn’t need to be dragged everywhere. He was still fairly weak, but he told himself that he’d felt worse. This wasn’t Scarif after all.

“You know, I’m really happy you’re here, Andor,” Anthan stated. Cassian looked at him sideways. That smile was back on his face again. How had Cassian missed it before? Anthan had been a better Intelligence officer than Cassian had given him credit for. He’d managed to trick all of them. “I mean, you know what it was like to work in the Rebellion. It wasn’t nearly as glorious as they’d made it out to be.”

“No,” Cassian replied flatly, “it wasn’t.”

Anthan gave him a sly look. “But you didn’t care about that, did you? No, to you, the Rebellion meant something. You actually believed in it. The Rebellion was your whole world.”

There wasn’t a point in denying it. The two of them had known each other long enough. It may have been years since they’d seen one another, but Anthan had also seen his file and he’d seen Cassian’s work firsthand. He knew just how dirty Cassian was willing to get his hands when it came to a mission, even as a teenager. Anthan would bemoan Cassian for being a stick in the mud, never willing to let loose, especially not on a mission. There wasn’t room for fun in those days.

“What’s it feel like to be tossed out like trash after everything you gave them? After all they took from you, they just left you out in the cold.” Anthan clucked his tongue, like it was a damn shame. What a pity. Poor Cassian. The Rebellion took and it took, but it could never give, not until the Empire was destroyed. Even then, would it make up for all that he’d done? He’d hoped that Scarif would help with that and it had, for a while, but everything had caught up with him again eventually, as it always did. “You really loved that girl, didn’t you? And even that they made you give up. Did she choose the Rebellion over you? Or did you leave her to protect her? Ah, you won’t tell me. You’re a close-lipped bastard.”

Would Jyn choose the Rebellion over him as she assumed he had done to her? She believed in it, yes, but she had never been as fully committed to it as him, not even after she’d joined up. To her, it was personal. She hated the idea that her father’s legacy would be the death of billions, no matter what he’d done in an attempt to stop it. In the end, it was only natural for her to fight the Empire and the Rebellion offered her the best chance. But she had ignored orders before and she would do it again if it meant something more.

_I can go with you._

She would’ve hated seeing him like this. He could only picture her howling and fuming with rage. They would’ve turned her into a caged animal here, just as she’d been on Wobani, except her bite would’ve been much worse. He couldn’t accept that for her.

“But no, I truly am happy you’re here,” Anthan continued, “because I get to see how far you’ve fallen. Draven’s wonderkid brought so low. It’s a pleasure, really.”

Cassian gave him a blank lookover. “Glad I could make your day.”

“It’ll be even better when we get more information out of you.” Anthan actually had the nerve to flick him in the head, like they were two teenagers again on a recon mission. “Anyone can fall and anyone can turn traitor, even you, if the price is right.”

“Hm, I’ve yet to find one.”

“And Erso?”

“She’d obliterate you,” Cassian said. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Anthan turned to give him a confused look. While he was still a little sluggish, Cassian gathered all the energy he had been saving the last day and hoped that adrenaline would do the rest. He jabbed the side of his hand as hard as he could into Anthan’s throat, causing him to immediately wheeze and buckle over from the pain, stumbling against the wall to stay on his feet.

Turning as quick as he could, Cassian kicked the guard’s wrist as he went to level the blaster at him and then stabbed the fork that he’d saved and hid up his sleeve into the other man’s neck. He’d bent the other prongs down so that only one remained, turning it into a small dagger. The man’s hand flew to the metal spike in his neck, his eyes widening with panic, but Cassian held it there as he lowered the guard to the ground.

“You can pull it out and bleed out in less than a minute,” Cassian growled as he let go of the spike and picked up the blaster, “or you can lie very still and pray the Force has mercy on you, but you’ll probably die either way.”

By the time he stood up straight and turned back around, Anthan was just now pulling himself up, but he still had a hand held protectively against his throat and was red in the face. Cassian took his blaster away as well, tucking it into the back of his pants, and jerked Anthan away from the wall so that he could press the guard’s blaster into the small of his back and move him forward.

“Why?” Anthan managed to rasp. “The Rebellion…won’t take you…back.”

Cassian didn’t bother answering him. Instead, he focused on getting to one of the smaller ships on board. His ship was a lost cause. They’d be able to track any of the ships easily, but that wasn’t the point. In the small area where they were docked, he found two guards. Deciding quickly, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the guard in the hallway was down, he pulled out the other blaster and trained it on the farthest guard. He took a deep breath and then squeezed the trigger. It hit them, knocking them off a railing. When the other guard spun around, he shot at her, missing first and nearly getting a blaster to the face for it, and then hit her with the second shot.

With the coast as clear as it could be, he shoved Anthan forward and used his handprint to get them onto one of the ships. With Anthan slowly recovering, Cassian found a pair of binders and hooked him tightly to a ladder. He quickly got to work on starting the ship. As soon as it began to start, alarms went off around them and Cassian scowled as he tried to work faster. His mind kept slipping though. Just when he didn’t need it the most, the drugs were having their last laugh at him.

“You won’t make it,” Anthan insisted in a gasping voice. “They won’t help you. The ones running the Alliance only serve the Rebellion in the end, not the people.”

“Maybe,” Cassian replied as he gritted his teeth and pushed through it. He could hear laughter echoing in the background and thought for a second that it was Anthan, but then he shook his head roughly and it went away. Not here, not now. “Maybe not.”

“They abandoned you to die!” Anthan cried out frantically, his voice rough. It must’ve hurt him to talk so loudly. It was a satisfying thought, one that grounded Cassian. “They don’t need you! You’re no longer a part of them!”

Cassian glanced back at him. “Am I?”

Anthan blanched. “No, no, no, no. I would’ve known. I would’ve heard something. They cut you off.” He jerked against his binders, but they didn’t move. When the ship detached and started to move, he slipped and would’ve fallen if he hadn’t been cuffed to the ladder. “Compromised like this, you’d be worthless. They burned you!”

“Officially, yes, I’m no longer a part of the Rebellion, completely cut off,” Cassian replied evenly as he flipped the last of the switches. “Unofficially? You said it yourself: the only way you leave is if you die.”

As more guards and soldiers appeared to fire at the ship, Cassian pulled out of the hanger and allowed the ship to coast into space. Anthan fought furiously, but could do little more than hurt himself. He wasn’t as willing to go to the same lengths as Cassian. He wouldn’t break his own wrist or dislocate his shoulder to get out of the binders. He was too weak. A man fighting for himself will only do so much.

“You can’t escape! You’ll be captured and killed! If not by this group, then by the Empire! You–”

An explosion rocked the ship, knocking them off balance, but if Cassian had waited any longer, other ships would have started following. It sucked right all the fight out of Anthan. He could only silently watch with wide eyes and a stunned expression as the large cruiser they had just been on was destroyed. There was a chain reaction of explosions, starting with the ship they’d found Cassian on. Flames blossomed around the ship, promptly sucked away by the vacuum that was space.

“We…we checked your ship…” Anthan mumbled. “There wasn’t a bomb…”

“This ship was the bomb,” Cassian said without a hint of emotion as he programed a course into the ship’s mainframe. “I’ve learned a thing or two about explosives since I killed you.”

Once the course was set, Cassian sat still at the controls, watching the ship disintegrate into floating pieces. He couldn’t be for sure how many people had been on that ship, not when they’d let him in only three rooms. For a brief moment, he paused and closed his eyes. There would be no screams to haunt him this time, having been lost in space, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t think about them. Their deaths would lie heavily on his conscience. He could only tell himself that this time many lives would be saved directly due to his actions. Someone had to bear the weight in order for others to rise to the top; he just hoped that he could stand to carry a little more.

Opening his eyes, he returned to the controls and worked on getting them out of here. It wouldn’t be long before someone, most likely involved with the Empire, came to investigate. They were waiting on correspondence from this ship, after all. The information they were counting on would be gone though. A destroyed computer or corrupted chip they could possibly save information from, but the only thing left was pieces. There would be no putting this back together. It was gone and the person who did it as well.

“You should be happy, Anthan,” Cassian pointed out as the hyperdrive started up. “You’ll be presumed dead again instead of the Empire believing you’ve gone traitor.”

His captive did not find that anything to be amused or happy about. Anthan sagged against the wall, only the binders holding him up, his eyes locked on nothing outside the window. Cassian ignored him, putting any of his personal feelings on the backburner. Sure, he wanted to sock Anthan right in the jaw for everything that he’d done. Good men and women had died because of him and others had been put in jeopardy and perilous situations.

Out of all the ones compromised, they couldn’t even be for sure how many Intelligence operatives remained alive, having cut off contact with them. It would be a lot of work to find them and get them back home, if it would even be worth risking it. Cassian wasn’t going to sugarcoat things when he’d never done it before. He knew that if his identity had been one of the ones released while he was in the field there would have been no rescue. Jyn might have fought for it, but in the end, it would’ve been too dangerous.

Even the mere chance that his identity and others like him might get released had caused the council to panic. He hadn’t been the only Intelligence officer on base when the breach had occurred. Like him, the Rebellion had cut their losses with most of them as well. Many had vanished on their own, some talking with Cassian beforehand. No one wanted to bring heat on the Rebellion and after all the things that they’d done in the dark was brought into the light, that was the only kind of attention they could get. Some went on missions with very small chances of success as others strewn themselves across the stars.

Cassian couldn’t be for sure, but he believed that he hadn’t been the only one given this mission. Likely their last. He hoped that only Anthan had been their source of information on how Rebel Intelligence worked, but it was all too possible that Cassian had not been the first former spy to get caught and tortured for information. When it was their turn to interrogate Anthan, they would find out.

Hopefully, the Rebellion would take him back. There was always a chance that they would still turn him away, just to be safe. He had prepared for that. Draven had told him that he was either to come back successful or not at all and success had to be perfect. Now that Cassian thought about it, he didn’t think Draven had had as much faith in him as before.

 _“If you get caught, you better do what you’ve been taught,”_ Draven had said before leaving. _“The Alliance will not be behind you on this. You’re on your own, as good as out.”_

Cassian leaned back in the chair and rubbed his face. Despite having rested and eaten the day before, exhaustion was wearing down on him. One night could not make up for all the rest. First though, he would need to ditch this ship and get a clean one, just in case. The last time someone had escaped from the Empire and come straight back to base, they’d brought a Death Star on their tail and he wasn’t about to make a rookie mistake like that. But for a minute, just one minute, he breathed and tried to relax. His mind felt like it was being held together by one fragile string and it was so close to breaking.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I want to thank everyone that has reviewed and read this fic. Considering the dark themes and tags, I figured it would be a tough sell, but the warm reception was both a relief and amazing. I am incredibly grateful. This last chapter is a little smaller and doesn't tie up everything, but I feel like that's the point of what Cassian does. The uncertainty that what he does actually accomplishes good. On a third note, I really loved creating and writing Anthan's character as a foil to Cassian so I might use him again.

The first thing that Cassian saw upon waking up was a blurry face. Dark skin with strands of dark hair straggling down. He immediately panicked, believing that he’d been captured again, but when he shot up and grabbed the person hovering over him by the throat, he was met with familiar eyes, if not terrified ones.

“Cassian!” Bodhi wheezed. “It’s me!”

For a second, Cassian didn’t let go, ready to tell him that he was just a trick of the mind -- he knew a hallucination when he saw one now -- but then he realized that the man he was holding onto was flesh and blood. He was real. He was alive. Cassian let go and pulled his hand back, laying it at his side on the bed. Bodhi took a gasp of air and touched his throat reflexively, but everything seemed fine. When a medic started towards them, he waved a hand to keep them back.

Cassian licked his dry lips. “I’m sorry, Bodhi. I--”

But he didn’t really know what to say.  _ Sorry, I thought you weren’t real  _ didn’t seem like a proper apology for nearly choking him or breaking his throat. If he did this again, they’d strap him up and that would really send him into a panic. He looked around, taking in the familiar sights of the med bay. He was on base. He was with the Rebellion. They’d taken him back.

Or maybe they were just patching him up enough to send him on his way. He didn’t even know how long he’d been unconscious and could barely remember getting here. Who knew what the council had decided since his abrupt and shocking return with the man responsible for hacking the Alliance in tow? Bodhi wouldn’t. He wasn’t Intelligence or high enough ranked, but he’d at least know a little more than rumors. Pilots loved to talk and he was friends with Skywalker, who was close to the Princess.

“What happened?” Cassian asked once he’d gathered his thoughts enough. They were still jumbled, probably from all the meds he’d been pumped with. He wasn’t sticky from bacta. There hadn’t been much in the way of physical wounds to treat. His mind was the thing that was fractured the most. “How long have I been out?”

Bodhi moved his hand from his throat to gather a chair and plop down in it. “You’ve scared the shit out of a lot of people is what happened. Showing up like that after weeks of radio silence. Everyone thought you were dead. Most believed you’d died not long after you were forced off base. And then you show up on a random ship with a man everyone else thought dead and apparently some huge ship was blown to bits on the Outer Rim, a ship that was thought to be connected with the people responsible for hacking Alliance Intelligence.”

That seemed reasonable. No one had truly expected him to live for long. Spies didn’t have a long life expectancy. Even Anthan had been shocked that Cassian was still alive and in the game. People would’ve assumed that Cassian would just vanish and, when his identity was released, either be captured, killed, or worse. He wouldn’t have been the first Rebel spy to get caught and tortured for information. All of them trained for that possibility. He’d had it happen to him before, when he was twenty, but he’d gotten out then too, only with help though. This time, he had been completely on his own.

If he lived, then perhaps there was hope. If he died, well, the Rebellion had let go of him already.

“Not to mention you were--” Bodhi hesitated and blinked at Cassian’s gaze. “You were kind of out of it. No, you were really out of it. One second you were coherent, pretty battered and exhausted, but you know, there, and the next you were just--” He waved his hands in the air. “It was like you were somewhere else. No one knew what to do. You were really freaking out and pulled out a blaster and-- Well, they had to sedate you.”

Cassian grimaced. “I guess the drugs weren’t out of my system yet.”

Bodhi peered at him. “They -- uh, whoever you were with -- they drugged you?”

“I’ve never been fond of things that mess with my mind,” Cassian grumbled. He reached up to touch his head, as if he could still feel the drugs doing their work in there, but judging from how dry his throat and mouth were, he’d likely been out for more than a day. When he tried to clear his throat, Bodhi seemed to get the hint and poured him a glass of water. He took it gratefully and sank back in the bed as he drank. As he did so, he watched Bodhi, who was starting to fidget in his seat. “What is it?”

After glancing up at him briefly, Bodhi looked back down at his hands in his lap. “What happened to you, Cassian? You were gone. That’s all anyone would tell us. You were just...gone and you weren’t coming back.” He bit his lip and forced himself to look up at Cassian. A year ago, he wouldn’t have done that. “Draven told Jyn that you weren’t a part of the Rebellion anymore.”

Cassian looked up at the ceiling. “I wasn’t. I’m not.”

“I don’t think the words _ ‘Cassian Andor isn’t in the Rebellion’ _ fit together in a logical sentence,” Bodhi pointed out. It wasn’t meant to be funny, but it caused Cassian to smile a little anyways, perhaps a tad too bitterly, but it was a smile nonetheless. Tentatively, Bodhi reached out to touch Cassian’s arm, forcing him to look back at him. “You scared us.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassian said earnestly. He was -- he was incredibly remorseful, more than he’d ever been after an op, and he couldn’t even say why. He’d done much worse before, hadn’t he? In the end, the only person he’d hurt was himself. Everyone else would’ve moved on from him eventually if it hadn’t worked. “It was either finish the job and hope for the best or die.”

“I know,” Bodhi replied, “but I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”

Cassian peered at him sideways. He knew what Bodhi was saying -- he knew exactly who Bodhi was talking about -- but he didn’t want to think about it. Not yet. Not while he also knew how fragile he was. The drugs were out of his system, yes, but the memories were still there. The hallucinations hadn’t left him. They’d felt so real. He had thought she was on that ship with him, pushing him forward, pushing him away.

_ You don’t need me. _

Trying to fight the inevitable, Cassian licked his lips again. “Ah, Jyn--”

“She’s off base right now,” Bodhi told him. Such a small thing, but it struck him cruelly in the chest. As terrified as he was to see her again, he needed to see her in the flesh. He needed to know that she was real. She had been wrong. He did need her, maybe not in the way that others needed the person they loved, but somehow, in his own way, he did. “After what happened when you returned…”

“What do you mean?” Cassian demanded, sharper than he intended.

Bodhi rubbed the back of his neck. “When the sedatives started working, they had to lower you to the ground. Jyn must’ve heard of your arrival because she showed up in the hanger. But you took one look at her and--” He was terribly uncomfortable, not meeting Cassian’s eyes and fidgeting in his seat again. “You started to cry. It freaked her out -- I guess it threw us all for a loop -- and she ran off the second you were out. I didn’t even know she was gone on a mission until I tried to find her the next day.”

Cassian tried not to cringe, but it was difficult. He had held out for as long as he could while in enemy hands, but it appeared as if coming back to familiar grounds had been the final straw. Seeing all the faces he’d thought he would never see again, touch the place he’d believed he’d never set foot in again, be the one person (himself) who he’d thought he’d have to completely destroy… It must’ve jarred something loose in him combined with the last vestiges of the drugs he’d been dosed with repeatedly.

“Those guys really did a number on you, didn’t they?” Bodhi sighed. “Seeing you like that was almost enough to make me cry.”

“Sentimental, are we?” Cassian murmured.

“You’re more sentimental than you’d like to admit,” Bodhi countered. “Why fight so hard then? Why put yourself through something that clearly caused you an insane amount of distress?”

“Because a lot of good people were going to die if someone didn’t,” Cassian answered.

Shaking his head, Bodhi stood up. “Or, just maybe, you wanted to come back home. You do know that you’re allowed to want something for yourself, right? You don’t need to be so self-sacrificing because honestly you’re not the only one that gets burned anymore.”

_ Welcome home. _

He may have been unconscious for a few days, but Cassian felt as if he could stand to sleep a few more.

*

His room felt strangely hollow by the time he returned to it. Strangely because he really hadn’t taken that much with him when he’d left. He was surprised that it was still here waiting for him. A part of him had thought that she would leave it, but there were still touches of Jyn left in the room. She didn’t have much more than him, but she still tended to hang onto things for longer.

Technically, he still wasn’t a part of the Rebellion. They were reviewing his intel and whatever they’d gathered from their interrogations of Anthan. He’d been debriefed what felt like a hundred times, always returned back to the med bay until further instructions. The doctors had been concerned about the lasting effects that the drugs and mental torture had him on, but so far, he hadn’t had any sudden relapses into a hallucination.

He shrewdly thought that his lack of a response to what he’d gone through was what was causing them so much concern, but honestly, he was just...done. He’d been wrought out until there was nothing left in him. Despite all the rest that he’d had, exhaustion still clung to his bones. It would take a while before he could right himself.

Bodies mended easily compared to minds.

For now, all Cassian could do was stand in the room and look around. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or what he was even doing here. This wasn’t his room anymore. He wasn’t naive enough to believe that he could just come back and pretend as if nothing had happened. Because he had left her. Regardless of his intentions, no matter what he’d been forced to do, he had walked out of this door and fully believed that he would not be coming back. He threw everything that made himself up into this mission.

Truth be told, he wasn’t even sure that Jyn would ever want to see him again.

_ You always leave in the end. It’s who you are. _

Before this mission, he would’ve said that she was wrong -- would’ve denied it vehemently -- would’ve chased after her to demand her to take it back. But now? Cassian could almost laugh. He’d done it, hadn’t it? Sure, it had been for a reason -- for a good cause, the greater good, the Rebellion, for others -- but he had left her, just as all the other people in her life had done. Coming back was null when he’d expected not to do so.

Still, still, he found himself propelled toward the bed. When he picked up the pillow she preferred, lumpy and old, he pressed it to his face and took in a deep breath. It smelled like her. He closed his eyes, savoring it, and told himself to enjoy it while it lasted. Likely, this would be all he would get. He’d walked out. He had to accept the consequences.

Just when he was about to set it down and leave, the door opened behind him and he spun around, the pillow clutched tightly against his chest, and found himself face-to-face with Jyn. Dimly, he could recall the last time he’d seen her, back in the hanger when he’d first arrived. The memory would always be foggy, too mixed up with the hallucination that he was fifteen and hiding in a hole behind a curtain with nothing but a blaster as troopers stormed the building.

But he thought he could remember her face swimming into view, her voice calling to him, and all he’d been able to desperately think was,  _ Don’t leave me, _ and he couldn’t tell if it was directed towards her or the Rebel soldiers outside of the building he was hiding in.

“How did your mission go?” Cassian asked, even though he knew they were the wrong words.

Jyn’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t. Don’t you dare--” Her fists clenched at her sides, like she was fighting against the urge to fight. “You don’t get to come back here and just act all casual.”

“No,” Cassian sighed, setting the pillow down, “I don’t.”

He wasn’t going to make any excuses. He couldn’t. The past few weeks had drained him. He’d been lying while some of his most hidden truths were dragged out of him and now there was nothing left. He was done; he couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t lie to himself and most importantly he couldn’t lie to her. Even worse, he had thought that he was telling the truth, but he was such a dedicated spy that he’d managed trick himself.

_ I gave almost my entire life to the Rebellion. _

No, there was no “almost” about it. He’d done what he had to do -- for the Rebellion, for himself, and maybe for her as well -- but there was a clear winner here.

She looked like she wanted to hit him or maybe run. He could still remember a time when he’d been afraid that she would do just that. It would’ve been easy. He pictured waking up and searching the base for her, only to find that she had left in the middle of the night. Her relationship with the Rebellion had been tenuous at best, even after Scarif and retrieving the Death Star plans. She’d been offered her freedom and she could’ve taken it -- she had confessed to thinking about it more than once -- but she’d stayed in the end.

All those fears and insecurities of his about her running away, something she was so good at, and he had been the one to leave. The irony was not lost on him, but it didn’t feel funny. It just hurt.

“I wanted to chase after you,” Jyn admitted quietly. “I wanted to search the entire galaxy for you.”

He had been afraid of that. Just because she’d been with the Rebellion for years now and proven herself loyal did not negate her reckless abandon. She would always be the person that threw herself head first into the fire; she would always be the one that got burned by the flames he created. She didn’t care about that. When she cared about someone, it was all that mattered. Kriff, there was that time Bodhi’s ship had been shot down and she’d torn through enemy territory to find him and bring him back home. He could never forget the determination in her eyes; it had been like the glow of a burning kyber crystal.

“But they… They told me you were either dead or as good as.” Jyn swallowed and looked away. “I didn’t want to believe them, but Draven showed me report after report of the operatives whose identities had been released already. Dead -- captured, tortured, killed, maimed, ransomed -- all of them.” Her fists unclenched and then clenched again. She did want to hit something; he just wasn’t sure what or who. “It was like it was nothing to them -- like you meant nothing -- after everything you did and I…”

Cassian didn’t look away from her. “That’s the job I signed up for when I first joined the Rebellion.”

“Well maybe that’s not what I signed up for,” Jyn snapped, glaring up at him.

“Jyn,” Cassian sighed, softening under the heat of her glare, but she didn’t wilter. She was too angry with not only him but the entire thing. He was somewhat surprised that she was still here and hadn’t just turned around and walked out of the room the second she’d seen him in here. “You knew this. You know what I am. You know what I have to do -- what’s required of me. It’s been years since you’ve questioned me on it.”

His finger on the trigger, the cold rain pouring down on him, the hard rocks digging into his belly. Eadu was so far gone and yet it felt only days away sometimes.

“I’m not you!” Jyn exploded. “I can’t just--” She pushed the heel of her palm into her eyes, wiping away tears that she would not admit to spilling. He wanted to wipe them away for her, gently instead of the hard way she was digging at them, but he didn’t dare move towards her. “You can’t expect to just drop everything -- to let you go at a moment’s notice and move on without a thought. I can’t do that, not anymore. Maybe I never could.”

Taking a breath, Cassian lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. “I shouldn’t have expected that of you.” To be frank, he didn’t know whether he should’ve expected it of himself. Just because he had left did not mean that he hadn’t taken anything with him. His hallucination about Draven had been right: he had missed Jyn and he had thought about what he could do to get back to her. The old Cassian, the good spy, never would’ve done that. He would have put the mission first no matter what, as he’d always done. “But I wanted to make things easier for you.”

“Easier?” Jyn repeated incredulously, the pitch of her voice rising along with her eyebrows.

“I wasn’t supposed to come back,” Cassian told her as evenly as he could. He looked down at his hands, suddenly ashamed. He’d asked too much of her from the very beginning. Had he really thought things would change? That he could? She had never asked him to, but he’d thought he could. “I thought I was going to die.”

Jyn pushed on. “We’ve thought that before--”

“No, I believed it,” Cassian interrupted, forcing himself to look back up at her. What she saw in his face must’ve startled her because she snapped her mouth shut and didn’t even look angry at him for cutting her off. “Jyn, the chances of me succeeding in a way that would allow the Alliance to bring me back in was next to nothing. With each day, another name was released and another operative was killed and the clock was ticking. I only found them due to a series of circumstances, most completely out of my control. I was going to die and I didn’t want you sitting here believing that I might come back when I knew I wouldn’t.”

“But you did,” Jyn said in a quiet, hurt voice. Still focusing on the positive, refusing to let it go. She took the next chance and the next until there wasn’t any left.

“But I did,” Cassian agreed.

A thick silence fell over them. It had happened to them before, after arguments and fights that spread through them like wildfire. The kind of people that served in the Rebellion tended to be stubborn and hot-blooded. It went with the territory. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have been on the fringes fighting for the future, usually at the risk of their lives. None of them were safe. They all knew that dying was a high possibility.

But there was knowing you might die and knowing you were going to die. The last time he’d felt like that had been on Scarif. It had been harder than he’d expected to handle without Jyn by his side. How selfish.

“I would have gone with you,” Jyn said, breaking the silence.

“I know. I couldn’t have that. It’s not that I don’t think you were strong enough to handle it.” Cassian sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Could she have handled what he’d gone through? No, he didn’t think so. They both knew that she wasn’t cut from the same cloth as him. As much of a fighter, struggler, and survivor that she was, what he had gone through was a much different beast. Maybe it wouldn’t have broken her, but she would’ve snapped. It would have ended with her death. “I knew that I wouldn’t be strong enough to take it if you were there.”

“Am I a liability?” Jyn asked with a hint of venom. “Your weakness, Cassian?”

“Yes.”

When he looked back at her, he was caught off guard to see the flash of hurt on her face. He was tired of lying though. Draven, as not real as he had been, had also been correct. She made him weak. She made him remember that he was human. And maybe that was a bad thing, but hell, he was so exhausted. He wanted to pull her against his chest and cling to her; he wanted to breath her in and listen to her heartbeat; he wanted to lose himself in her and forget everything else.

_ You don’t need me. _

Yes, he did. Was that such a bad thing? Did he even care anymore?

“But you know what’s strange?” Cassian continued. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to do this without you. Maybe you are a weakness, but you’re also a source of strength, a reason to fight. I didn’t--” When he closed his eyes, it was all too easy to imagine that he was back on the ship and none of this was real. His heart began to race; his breathing quickened. The loneliness had threatened to swallow him whole. “There were moments when I forgot what I was even doing, times I was begging myself to give up. I couldn’t take it much longer. My loyalty to the Rebellion wasn’t enough. I thought it was, but it wasn’t.”

The shame in his voice must have been evident because she stepped closer to him. He didn’t express it often -- everything he did, he did for the Rebellion -- but when he did, it felt so raw, like it was a part of his muscles and bones that hid under his skin. “That doesn’t make you a bad soldier.”

“No, but it makes me a pretty shoddy spy,” Cassian added. “Every time I wanted to give up -- to just let go -- I thought of you. I could just see how mad you’d be if I stopped fighting.” She was closer to him now, standing right in front of him, close enough for him to touch. His knees almost brushed against her. If he reached out just a little, he would be able to grasp her hands hanging limply at her sides, but he stayed still. “I’ve been fighting for the Rebellion for so long, but that wasn’t what kept me going.” He raised his eyes to her. “It was hope.”

The room was dark, but he thought that there was the ghost of a smile on Jyn’s face. “Someone once told me that rebellions are built on hope.”

“All this time and I still thought it wasn’t meant for me,” Cassian told her.

“And now?”

Cassian took a deep breath. “And now I want it. I want it more than anything.” It didn’t hurt so much to admit it, this selfish desire of his. He’d given nearly his entire life to the Rebellion. Could he not stand to ask for something good and kind in return? Did he not deserve it? Did he not believe in it?

Tentatively, like she was the one that was scared, she lifted a hand. He didn’t move, but closed his eyes when he felt her fingertips graze his rough jaw. They’d cleaned him up when he had first arrived, but he hadn’t bothered with the upkeep since. He leaned into her touch, unwilling to stop himself, and finally reached out to take her other hand in his. Falling forward, the crown of his head pressed gently against her stomach and her hand slid from his face to the back of his head, her fingers threading in his hair.

“I missed you,” he mumbled against her.

“Don’t leave me like that again,” Jyn told him in a barely controlled voice. “We’re in this together.” She squeezed his hand and he squeezed hers back in return. “I… Maybe I don’t understand why you did what you did, but I know it needed to be done and I’m… I’m just happy you’re alive. Pissed as hell, but better mad at you than grieving you.” He didn’t need to look at her face to know that she was barely holding herself together; he could feel the tightness in her body. “This place doesn’t feel like home without you.”

Cassian smiled. Home. It didn’t matter that they’d moved bases three separate times or that they knew that it was more than likely that they would move again. As long as they were together, all of them, there would be a home because home was what you made of it. That glimmer of hope that kept a person going, the light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. He’d fought so long to give them to other people. It felt like a breath of air to be able to capture it for himself. It felt good to be alive and not take it for granted or feel like he was on borrowed time.


End file.
